


Bad Wolf

by hyperions



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-08 02:30:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14684559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperions/pseuds/hyperions
Summary: Luke 15:32But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly just me needing to get out a lot of my Jacob Seed thoughts/emotions, haha. He is a terrible person, but I really wanted to explore him as a character especially when he was so well-written. Future chapters will definitely address lots more, especially his relationship with the other Seed boys (possibly Faith as well!). Like I said, I just needed to get a lot of this out somewhere. Don't you love it when you encounter a character that just makes your fingers itch to write??? 
> 
> But yeah this is just a tiny prologue-esque thing before I get into the meat of it. (: Also there won't be a focus on gore/violence, but there is a lot of violent-related content and references to messed up war stuff, so head's up on that.

Light. There's light everywhere. Light and the outline of earth, solid and black against holy white. The thunder of an engine, the peppering of gunfire. The _thud-thud-thud_ of a heartbeat. A bulldozer forces a dozen men into an early grave and their hands reach out, reach as though for the sun and that light beyond. A sniper sight focuses in close on a man's face and his eyes are bloodshot from tears before they roll back when the bullet cuts clean through bone and brain. Dead soldiers in piles, limbs limp under the sun. An endless stretch of desert, of hellscape as white as the light on all sides and unyielding. Step after step after step in the sand and the dirt and the sharp juts of rock. It all goes dizzy, goes blurred when the other man in the desert struggles to look at him from where he's slumped against the ground. Sunken eyes, maybe. Cracked lips. Starvation isn't at all hidden in the shadows on his face, in the tremble of his jaw. Legs fumble useless beneath his breaking body and the look in his eyes is long-lost. And the more Jacob watches him, the more his starved mind uses the last of its reserves to calculate the situation, the closer the light comes to swallowing him whole. Blurred vision takes in the outline of the hunter's knife in his hand, calloused skin vaguely recalls the memory of its weight in the heavy curl of his fingers. And then......

Clarity.

Something warm splashed on skin. Desperation lining his jaw. Legs soon strong enough to push him out of the sand. A stinging in his mouth; the burn of an act abhorrent hurting all the way down.

Through the light he thinks he sees red. Red like the pinpoint of a laser-sight marking his forehead. He doesn't move to dodge, doesn't throw his weight onto the ground. He stares straight ahead -- dead eyes looking into death's aimed shot as a whispered " _do it_ " scrapes past lips forever stained scarlet. Someone pulls the trigger.

 _Pop_.

He wakes with a jolt, sitting up rigid in his cramped seat. Ice-blue eyes scan the room which turns out to be the inside of a plane filled to the brim with men just like him; disheveled soldiers who look like hell. The guy sitting to his right looks apologetic once he notices him, shows him it's just the can of cola he'd popped open that must've woken him. Jacob simply turns away to stare out the window into the white light of the sky beyond, sparing himself the sympathy in the other soldier's glance. He's flying stateside, but without the anticipation of so many others. Declared "unfit for service" itches something down in his shrapnel-scarred bones and stirs a sense of unrest in the pit of his gut. If he can't fight, he doesn't know what else he has. As he understands it, he's to be treated at a veteran's center before he can return to the lull and sway of society. Civilian life? Bumping shoulders with businessmen and babysitters? His strong shoulders hunch as he leans forward and sighs long and slow.

He can feel his purpose slipping from his skin even now. It's a hollow feeling, an frigid feeling heavy like lead, and he hates it.

But as he closes his eyes again it all threatens to come back. The reaching hands, the ' _thunk_ ' of a bullet in meat, the last look in Miller's face before red, red, red.  He doesn't sleep much for the rest of the flight and lets it carry him home.

 _Home_. Even the word leaves something bitter on the back of his tongue.

Home was only ever the weight of two other boys leaning on either side in the dark of their derelict Georgia bedroom.


	2. All-American

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops this took me longer than expected to write out. I got distracted by a lot of real life stuff, plus more video games! But I'm back in the groove and still have everything planned out. (: Here's hoping I can actually do this awful man justice.

" _All the way!_ " they used to say. " _Death from above_."

The 82nd Airborne Division marks him as "all-american" as a man can get, especially to the other broken soldiers seeking refuge in Atlanta's military hospital. But the walls smell too clean and look too white. The doctors smile too much, the volunteers are too sympathetic, and the stories feel too cramped in the space of a room. When Jacob sits in a chair across from a psychologist who looks over his glasses at him and assures him it's all _perfectly natural,_  he can't help but feel iron lining his jaw and bitterness soak the back of his tongue.

Perfectly natural.

How rotten a country can be to polish its sharpest tools only to know they'll chip dull and useless once they've served their grim purpose. The human brain simply isn't capable of taking in that kind of information (those sights, those sounds, those awful smells) and endure it unscathed. Some fight it better than others, but Jacob knows his sins run especially dark and deep. The doctor asks him about Miller and all he can do is look the man in the eye and smile. Smile because he can't find the words to describe what happens when you turn toward a person -- a _friend_  -- and realize that their purpose is no longer comradery or protection, but meat. That doesn't help his case, of course. A lot of words get jotted down and typed up describing the dead-ends in Jacob's treatment while heads shake in a kind of hollow disappointment. They had so proudly crooned over his many military decorations upon his arrival and now sigh at him sadly like that's supposed to bring some kind of comfort, some kind of kindness. He only feels more like the fighting dog -- the champion of the ring -- whose lost his fangs. There's nothing he hates more than that feeling.

His doctors insist that he talk to more of the other patients, like socializing him will encourage progress with his therapy. To his credit, he tries.

"You fall down the stairs?" he jokes in a growl to one of the guys in a wheelchair who laughs nervously and shrugs much smaller shoulders. He shyly adjusts his blanket over his wound -- amputated leg at the knee.  
"Grenade, sir," comes a quiet reply, though he seems thankful for the company.  
Jacob sits beside him in the circle of chairs by the TV in the common area, chewing an apple and passing him one. The kid looks like he barely spent one tour overseas. Another example of something fresh, something bright, left to rot before finding its true potential. But Jacob doesn't show pity, only something far more casual to smooth frayed nerves. The wounded soldier still seems timid, though, and doesn't meet his eyes as he bites into his apple.  
"Those'll get you," Jacob teases, stare following the curve of fruit in the kid's thin fingers. Frail, quivering, without balance or direction. He wonders vaguely how a runt like him managed basic training. Or it was the war that made him this way; spat him out after chewing him up into this mauled ghost of a man. His gaze snaps back to the soldier's pale face. "You must be grateful to be back stateside."  
Oddly enough, this makes the youth stiffen in his wheelchair and steel lines the jittery line of his stare. "Not really, sir."  
"Oh?" asks Jacob, head tilting lazily to one side. His company doesn't seem nearly as skittish as he had mere moments before. "Why's that?"  
The kid's gaze doesn't waver from his this time, even when a sound in his voice wobbles like a fawn's stilt legs.  
"I just wanna serve my country." A pause, head bowing again. "Sir."

Loyalty. Devotion. Purpose. Strength. No matter the body -- the shell of bone and meat both thick and thin -- the soldier has a spirit no one else can understand. It separates them from the common man, the softened man. And though the soldier he sits with is weak, meek, and wounded, there is still a burning in the center of hurt-glazed eyes that holds him together stronger than the men who drive past the hospital each day. And Jacob feels it, knows it intimately. He and his kin might be damaged tools tossed aside, but they are still tools -- still creatures of use that thrive when there is a job to be done. Anything is better than weakness. Anything is better than rolling over belly-up to those who would see them muzzled and leashed dormant in the shadows.

Jacob stands from his chair and leaves the soldier to his apple, letting a hand rest on a slumped shoulder to squeeze some semblence of reassurance. And as he walks the white hallways, he feels his gut clench a tight, sickened knot. Right and left are reminders of what he's been marked and made; evidence that they claim him broken beyond repair otherwise he'd still be over there "fighting the good fight" and putting bleeding knuckles to something besides a sandbag. The scars on his arms, his chest, his face... They throb the same kind of itch the first ones used to feel. The ones Old Man Seed would give him when his reflexes couldn't put him fast enough between John and the belt (the beer bottle, the chair leg, the hard toe of his boot).

Useless. Restless. Aimless.

And he hates it. Hates the look the doctors and nurses keep giving him, too. Hates not knowing what to do with all this war-torn wrath and fragmented fury. Hates wondering if his brothers are still out there somewhere. Hates that he feels like he's broken a promise to them in the same throw of fate that's branded him "used goods." The more he watches his fellow veterans, the more he wonders if he'll go mad here. _Wouldn't take much_ , he thinks even as the doctor writes him another prescription and advises more breathing exercises. Wouldn't take much to tip over the jagged precipice into a void of blackness, of hopeless despair. And maybe that's what waits for him when the medicine doesn't work and his money runs out.

"Perfectly natural" the doctors chant like a mantra in his ear. That's usually what the people of a decaying empire like to tell themselves when things start going wrong.

More weeks pass and his treatment goes nowhere. Eventually, just as he'd anticipated, his funds run dry and the hospital has him pack his bags. One bag, actually, filled with flimsy mementos of the battlefield. The staff smiles sadly as they show him out, shrugging and shaking their heads with words like "we're so sorry," and "we'd like to do more, but we can't." Jacob says nothing and turns his back on the building that caged him too cramped in memories the doctors couldn't force out of him. Funnily enough, he thinks Miller would've growled " _good riddance_ " and spat at their sign by the gate. Jacob does the latter, doesn't care that a couple on the sidewalk look at him with utmost disgust (and a sliver of fear) when he regards them coldly in an ice-blue stare.

Atlanta sprawls open for him but all he sees is cages anew. The breath of trees and mountain air is a far reach from the asphault and tire burns, the mindless chatter of civilian life so foreign to a warhound like him. Even before juvie, he couldn't relate to the world bustling so pointless on all sides. Now he _really_  feels it like nails dragging tortuous down the face of a chalkboard. None of this is the welcome embrace of "home" nor even the offer of opportunity dangling like steak over salivating jaws. It's all just metal and plastic and face after face after face after face. None of them are familiar ones, none of them are John's bright, blue eyes or Joseph's penetrating stare through messy hair. It's all just one big mass, one big herd of meat moving from one place to the next like deer, like cattle. So what else can Jacob do but walk away? There's nothing for him here but hollow monoliths of metal and stone -- ugly buildings of an ugly city where people grow fat and lazy gorging on the spoils they never earned with their own two hands.

He lingers around the outskirts of Atlanta for about a month. He still has enough money to crash in piss-poor motel rooms that smell like mold and sweat. Work is too hard to come by, especially for a veteran with acid burns and the glare of a hungry wolf. Most of his money goes into food and shelter, but a few bills get passed between lithesome fingers when he itches for something to remind him that he's human and he's here (here in this room with peeling wallpaper and creaky mattress springs). The women stroke his scars and coo his name, drag their nails down his shoulders and sigh with the firm rocking of strong hips. But he finds little satisfaction there, doesn't even bother sticking around once they settle under the sheets. Whether stumbled away from bars or the sidewalk, they all feel the same -- hollow, empty, lacking. Skin on skin might make the blood run hot, but it doesn't get it **boiling**. So his focus hardly drifts from the essentials. He's never been an easy man to distract when the distractions are hardly ever worth the shift of thought.

The only thing that ever makes him take even the slightest pause is when he notices a picture in the newspaper someone leaves behind on a bar stool. The picture is of a handsome young lawyer with a charming smile and an arm around his client's shoulders. The caption reads: "Duncan (pictured left) and Rogers (pictured right) on the courthouse steps celebrating the trial's verdict."

 _Duncan_. He thinks he knew a Duncan overseas. He wonders vaguely if that's why he stops to stare long and good at the picture of the man with a smile that looks like it could coax the secrets from a priest. It probably has. There's something about the eyes, comes a passing thought. The picture's in black and white, but the eyes look right at him -- right at a part of him hidden for years under scars and barbed nostalgia. Like someone he remembers. Like someone he knows meant something more besides gunfire and handcuffs.

But he turns back to his drink and forgets about it. His memory sees a lot of things it can't make sense of and he's given up trying to speak its cryptic language.

Eventually, his pockets run dry and shitty motel beds are a luxury he can no longer afford. Instead he sleeps under bridges, behind movie theatres, and in abandoned lots. He takes food when he can find it, but never begs. Some of the others do, of course, and he doesn't blame them when it's the drilling ache of an empty belly urging it of them. When you cut a man open for meat, however, you don't feel the desperation as deep to coax out pity for paper cups of spare change. A few use the cash they find for drugs, for booze. Jacob just moves from one place to another with what little he still has and doesn't speak much to the other men left homeless on the side of so many roads. He walks northwest and lets his legs carry him the way they have so many times before in worse places, worse weather. Rain doesn't sting, frost doesn't burn. It's as though life itself is something beyond his bones; a world on the other side of fogged glass and he's only an observer.

And when his boots crunch into Rome's dirt and leaves, he's still only watching it happen. "Home" might be more of a comfort than the city's too-close buildings, but it's still only a stale taste in his mouth. Because home can't feel like home when one third of a whole stands alone. It smells like humid summers, cotton farmland, and riverbanks. It's lacking the stronger musk of poverty-stricken turmoil that came with his childhood home and its ugly neighborhood. But if he closes his eyes and lets the wind brush over his face, lets the sounds drape over him in a blanket, lets the memories back in from all the boxes they're buried in... Then it's something more familiar. Afternoons escaping his horrendous home life spent instead in the forest just beyond the church. Schoolyard swings swaying like wind-chimes where he used to pummel Joseph's many bullies into the ground. The riverbed he'd stand barefoot in and see if he could catch fish with just his calloused hands when the other boys told him he couldn't. The massive, red-leafed maples he'd read under with a stolen pack of smokes and bloody knuckles. The crackle of the radio he used to take out by the farm fences with John once he was old enough and wanted to dance with him under 4th of July fireworks. He even remembers the ribs he'd nicked off a grill to share with him and their faces covered rust-red with barbecue sauce.

He opens his eyes. Memory lane is a dangerous place, sometimes. If he's not careful, he'll forget the road in front of him in favor of the fantasy sprawling out all too tempting before him like a sultry women with come-hither lips.

So he keeps walking. Keeps walking until the only option left to him is the decrepit shelter left forgotten in the shadow of all the shiny new housing developments that weren't here in his youth. Rome's really cleaned up its act, he thinks. Someone finally bought up all the land wasting away in the scarred hands of the poor and downtrodden. Now that he's here, he's not sure what happens next. It's as though a very private, pathetic part of him had hoped Joseph and John would be standing city-center with arms outstretched to him all, " _welcome home_ " to their trench-torn brother. No such luck. In fact, there's even more nothing for him here than he remembers.

Days lean into weeks that lean into months. Jacob remains at the shelter and all he does is wait. He waits to see if his body simply collapses in on itself. Waits to see if the nightmares somehow get sick of tormenting a tired brain. Waits to see if his fighting spirit might find him again, though it's been silent for far too long. Waits to see if Joseph or John look for him here in this disheveled mess of broken men. Somedays his thoughts nag him to shave, to step outside and breathe some of the air that used to fill wild, fire-breathing lungs. But those thoughts fall dust to the wind when the will finds itself so lacking. And when he's at his worst, he thinks he can hear Miller's voice mumbling coarse in his ear.

 _Thought we were friends, Seed. Thought we were in this fight together_.  
We were. We were, but there was no other way.  
_You sure about that? You sure you couldn't have pushed ahead one more day? Could've come back for me. Could've got us both home._  
You don't wanna be here. War was better than this.  
_Not like I get a choice, y'know? You made the choice for me._  
Yeah, I did. I had to.  
_Don't know if you did, Seed. Pretty sure you're just fucked in the head._  
I had to.  
_Had to? Had to cut me open like that? Had to dig inside me and get all the juicy bits?_  
I had to.  
_Had to tear into me like an animal, huh? Had to get my blood aaaall down your face?_  
Shut up. I had to. Shut up.  
_We were friends, you fuckin' monster. We were friends and you made meat outta me._  
Shut up. Shut up. I had to. Shut up--  
_You're not even human, sicko. You love killing too much._

Jacob wakes with a jolt and the burning of his own fingernails digging painful into his scalp.  
This happens too often these days. He won't remember falling asleep in the corner of the room. Won't remember when Miller's voice starts sounding too real and too loud in the space of his skull. Won't remember what makes all the images come back colorful as ever with the pattering of gunfire and the screaming wailing high-pitched over the sand. Days blur together and so do the waking and dreaming hours, leaving Jacob Seed little more than a pitiful phantom of a man tangled up between trauma and reality. And he always has that stinging, iron taste on the back of his tongue. The remnants of his sins never letting him forget the sacrifice a man makes to save a skin he doesn't know if he wants.

Even when he lies by one of the few windows and peers weakly under the broken blinds to see the outside, he still has trouble remembering himself. He used to be such a driven man, such a purposeful man. He used to be clean-cut and sharp edges: a leader amongst juvenile delinquents and soldiers alike. He had charisma, once. Had stern, piercing eyes that used to hook into a man's soul and inspire him with loyalty. Now, he's just... this thing. This mass. Meat left to rot in the shadow of an ill-kept shelter with too many men just like him. He doesn't even try to see if he recognizes any of the other people huddled against the walls with dirty fingernails and torn blankets. Why should he when he can't even recognize himself in the smudged glass of the bathroom mirror?

It's at this point that weakness settles in. Weakness in the form of hopelessness where he doesn't even try anymore. He just lies there day after day, lifeless apart from the steady _tha-thud_ of a tired heartbeat. Nightmares are his only company now and he's at peace with that. Just as he had been at peace with all the horrible deeds he'd sown at the behest of his commanders.

One nightmare in particular sticks out and, for once, it doesn't involve the warped image of Miller's face. Instead, it's the slow walk to the old Seed home. Everything is monochrome and quiet besides small sounds of the wind, of birdsong, of the crinkle of broken beer bottles under his boots. There's also the slow creak of the door as he opens it and steps inside. Where he expects to see his father sizing him up from across the living room, there's no one. Just all the dirty furniture left untouched. He enters the kitchen where his mother would be doing dishes so as not to hear the sounds of her husband getting ready to grab one of the boys by the hair. Still no one, still nothing but the stained tablecloth he remembers staring hard at whenever Old Man Seed got him pinned to the kitchen floor.

And then he finds their bedroom. Just one room shared between three boys where they used to huddle together whenever Jacob would've stolen sweets for them all to share. His eyes skim over broken toys -- John's, of course. He always loved what was material and solid. He also sees piles of old magazine and newspaper clippings -- Joseph's favorite escape. He makes his way to the bed that was his own, finds the pine needles and animal bones he used to bring home with him strewn beneath the moldy mattress. But it's as he turns toward Joseph's and John's beds that he realizes they're not empty like his is. There's the impressions of bodies beneath the blankets as though they've simply been here sleeping the entire time. A swell of warmth and emotion blooms in his chest and anticipation overwhelms whatever voice of reason tries to reign him back in. He always falls for this. Every time, this nightmare traps him here and he never learns. He always reaches for the sheets and pulls them down so he can see his brothers again; see them looking up at him smiling in spite of everything they've had to endure.

They _are_  lying there, but the eyes that gaze up at him are dead ones white and glazed in a lifeless haze. Their mouths are left open, blood is even stained down the side of John's lips like he'd been caught in a soundless scream. And Jacob trembles. Trembles as he falls to his knees and reaches for both boys to hold their small hands in his. Finally, he sobs out their names. It's all he can say as that sinking, frigid weight of helplessness settles into his stomach, into his bones all over again.

" _John. Joseph--_ "

Even though it's a dream, his voice croaks it out from where he's lying in a musty cot. One hand even reaches out for the ones that aren't real. This is something that happens over and over again, like his brain has it timed on routine for him to suffer those cold, dead faces and break into the sobs he never could before. It's torture, it's his just desserts for leaving them behind.

But, one day, John and Joseph actually answer back. And they're real.

He has to blink through the haze of it all to even start recognizing Joseph Seed, who's got a hand on his shoulder as he speaks to him in a hushed, gentle voice. The pale light filtering through the window-blinds crowns his head in a golden halo through the gloom like a circlet of hope to reach for in the shroud of Jacob's clouded mind. And though Joseph looks _so_  different with the beginnings of a beard and hardship lined prematurely in a still-young face, it's the eyes that tell all. Penetrating, piercing, powerful, and "off" in a way he's never been able to describe. Like he can see through the layers of reality into something bigger, something more, and no one else can see the places where it's all starting to fray at the seams. His voice, though deeper now, still folds itself quiet and intimate into his ear when Joseph bows his forehead down to his. He always had a way of speaking so tenderly even when the words were sharp and cold. All he says now is, "Shhh. We've found you now, Jacob. We've found you and we're going to be a family again."

Jacob doesn't know how to wrap his head around what's happening. One minute, he's alone; _too_ alone in the hell of his thoughts left numb and rotting. The next, he's in the warm embrace of his younger brother who smooths back his tousled, scarlet hair and murmurs sweet reassurance. And once he adjusts to this fact, he also notices someone else standing uncomfortably behind Joseph -- a strikingly handsome young man with dark hair and blue, blue eyes.

Blue like the ones that had gazed up at him adoringly when Jacob found a litter of pups by the railroad tracks and let him hold one. Blue like the ones that would leak floods of tears when the scars on his back stung too much. Blue like the ones that watched, wide and worried, as Jacob was driven away in the back of a cop car.

"...John?" The voice that scrapes out of his lips is harsh and hoarse, barely his own after being untouched for so long. But the young man nods even as he regards him with clear uncertainty from where he stands still in shadow.

It finally starts to hit him, finally starts to sink in that he's found what he wanted. He came to Rome because something about their old stomping grounds pulled magnetic at his core. That core yearned for its two lost pieces, for those fragments strewn to the fire that swallowed up the barn that had seen their last moments together before everything was sirens and cells and grenade pins. Now they're here -- _really_ here and now no one can take them away from him. It's a warmth that settles slowly, deeply, though his flesh like hot water as Joseph keeps murmuring kindness into the wild mess of his hair. Honestly? He never thought he'd set eyes on either of his brothers again. And now, here they are. And now, they're going to take him home.

Eventually, Joseph leads him out of the shelter and past all the other crumbled shadows lying in heaps on their lonely cots. Jacob's still too far gone, too much a ghost of his former self to truly accept what's happening. He just remembers that he'd squinted up at the sun once they'd stepped outside and that Joseph's hand had been especially tight on the ridge of his shoulder, as though fearful he'd fade away into nothing. Even once they get him under a roof that doesn't reek of mold and water damage, the eldest Seed brother still has trouble adapting to the change. Days pass and his mind and body are too accustomed to the pointless routine he's already succumbed to: little more than lie in bed and roll over whenever the nightmares bleed through. He still has trouble looking at John, who seems to have just as much trouble looking at him, as though some semblance of guilt or discomfort finds itself wedged between them and the too many years that have passed since Jacob looked through the cop car window and promised his littlest brother he'd be back soon.

Fortunately, Joseph knows what to say to start stoking the old fire of his warrior's spirit.  
"I need you, Jacob. I need your strength."  
No answer yet. Nothing as Jacob keeps his gaze averted from the focused stare he can feel boring into his skull.  
"You have seen great horrors. You have seen the wretched greed and lust of mankind at its worst. We both know that." Joseph gestures to John, who's sitting at a desk across the room and still says nothing. "Once they had used you, they left you here to rot. The corrupt never change and we all three have lived it, breathed it, endured it." An assertive hand returns to the back of Jacob's head to try and guide their faces closer and return the connection of eye contact. "You need purpose. With purpose, you have always thrived," Joseph continues, though he takes pause as the next few words fold more tender and direct in the shape of his mouth. "You... are our _protector_."

Protector. Guardian. Soldier. Warrior. The words stitch together in his head, threading the letters one-by-one into a single feeling of budding warmth amidst ice-cold ribs. Joseph keeps elaborating on "The Voice" that's told him about the end of days and his great mission to guide the righteous into safety for a future in Eden. Jacob doesn't know if he believes it's truly the word of God or any other higher power, but the way Joseph crafts his vision with such passion, such _conviction_... That's what makes Jacob wonder more than anything. Makes him think that, somehow, Joseph could be right. But, more importantly, that there truly could be some kind of purpose here in this rambling and madness. And there is nothing more inspiring than purpose. Especially for the tired wolf left packless and alone without so much as a bone to sharpen his teeth.

"Be our protector again," whispers Joseph, who's still watching his brother's scarred face. " _Please_."  
Everything clicks into place and Jacob lifts his head. His gaze, dulled with apathy, flickers with forgotten light that makes Joseph start to smile at the edges of his mouth. And though Jacob still says nothing, still can't craft the right words, he stands from the bed and goes to the bathroom where he takes up a razor and scissors and runs a hot shower. It's the most he's moved in months and it won't be put to waste. His muscles feel sluggish and lethargic with all the strength sapped from his listless spirit, but there's just something about the word " _protector_ " that coaxes out something close to the embers of motivation. Against all odds, he's with his brothers again. Against all odds, he's being given the chance at purpose when most soldiers only find it on the battlefield. Joseph's oh-holy mission is completely beyond him, but his role could be opportunity anew to find himself reborn.

His hands don't shake as he cuts away at long, matted hair. They're the most dexterous they've been in months, especially when he starts to shave away so much of the unruly beard he's let dominate his face. And by the time he steps into the shower, he can actually feel the hot water running down old scars and burns and places he thought had grown numb with indifference. And it feels **good**. So good that he turns up the heat and lets himself become swathed in steam as droplets carve near-scalding paths down this neglected machine of meat and bone. He closes his eyes and embraces the pain of it inviting him back to life. He doesn't know how long he stands in that shower, doesn't much care if John or Joseph wonder if he's tried cutting his wrists. There's just him and the throb of too-hot water down war-worn shoulders and burning into every crevice of scar tissue.

Protector. Purpose.  
Fight. Train. Sacrifice.

The words chant over and over under the spray of the water until they're lingering on the edge of Jacob's exhaled breath when he finally opens his eyes. And though his strength is still weak, he can feel it finally in his limbs again. A tingle, a prickle, a spark of motivation in bones that have felt far too hollow for far too long. This might mark him a tool destined forever to be used by whichever hand might reach to wield him, but such is the life Jacob accepted long before he signed it over to the army. He's the sword to be grasped in the grip of kings burning for conquest like the American government and like his brother Joseph who talks a humble story, but has always yearned for a touch of greatness. So when he finally turns off the water and is left only with blossoms of steam enclosed around him, he understands what must be done. And it's the most alive he's felt since stepping foot back on American soil.

He shuffles back into the bedroom in a fresh shirt and sweats, hair cut and beard trimmed. Joseph is smiling and John's attention seems newly piqued from where he sits. For a moment, Jacob simply takes in the sight of them as though he hadn't seen them properly before. Lean, gangly-limbed Joseph always looking like he knows something you don't. And John. Short, well-groomed John with heavily-inked arms and tailored clothes. Jacob realizes finally that this is the man he'd seen on the Atlanta newspaper all that while ago; the man with the likable smile and too-familiar eyes that always stroke a chord over battered heartstrings. It's John he promised to return to, to guard, to protect like he had so many times before when Old Man Seed's breath stank too hard of booze. Fragile, sensitive John with the blue, blue eyes and cheeky tongue even for one so young. The sight of him is further inspiration for the soldier stepped forth from the steam like a featherless phoenix.

He has a chance again to be the big brother he couldn't be once they had him carted off to juvie. He has a chance to make up for all the days and nights apart; the ones that must've been fresh hell for the boy who attracted bullies like flies on soda pop. John just stares back at him as though he finally sees Jacob Seed now washed clean of the grit and grime. Recognition and a sliver of old, forgotten fondness flutters in the blue of those eyes and sets everything all the more in stone.

So Jacob glances to Joseph again and in his found-again voice says, "Where do we start?"


End file.
